The Citizen Architect

Sunday, December 30, 2012

The goal of US
Fair Housing Law is noble:to create
diverse, vibrant cities, free from divisions based on race and ethnicity; to
allow every American to live in the best possible housing that they can afford.Landlords are prohibited from discriminating
against tenants based on race, ethnicity, religion, family status, or
disability.Realtors are prohibited from
engaging in practices like block-busting and racial steering.Cities are supposed to use municipal policy
to fight segregation.

The laws have worked remarkably well since they were written
in 1968.Neighborhoods that were almost
completely white are now diverse.Houston’s Sharpstown was developed in the 1950s as a white suburb; today
it has a wonderful mix of Hispanic, Black, White, and Asian residents.Urban neighborhoods are no longer ghettos
where minorities live in squalor.Until
recently, the Washington Avenue Corridor east of downtown Houston was a
slum.Now it’s a hotbed of dining and
nightlife.

For the most part this was done without strong enforcement
from HUD.But that’s changing now.HUD is on the offensive against cities and towns
– using lawsuits and the threat of withholding funds against those that oppose
public and low-income housing projects.ProPublica wrote about HUD’s
involvement in a long, bruising fight over public housing in New York’s
Westchester County.(A fight that
ended in settlement.)Saint Bernard Parish Louisiana, too, has
fallen prey.HUD rushed to support a
developer’s plans to build low-income housing, despite strong neighborhood
opposition.The case is still in court.

Closest to home, and perhaps worst of all, is what
HUD threatened to do to Galveston.Hurricane Ike severely damaged Galveston’s already deteriorated public
housing projects.Local officials
demolished the housing soon after the storm.Rather than rebuilding the projects, Galveston’s government wanted to
use Housing Choice Vouchers to accommodate the island’s poor throughout the
island.The idea would have been more in
keeping with the tenets of Fair Housing, but HUD said ‘no.’They
threatened to withhold all of Galveston’s
rebuilding funds, unless the City put back its old public housing projects.

While HUD forces new public and low-income housing projects
on cities and towns, Serious problems persist in existing housing:crime; rodent and bug infestations; structural
problems; sewage back ups; electrical fires.When I was President of the Braeburn Super Neighborhood, I and my
colleagues worked to address these sorts of problems at three apartment
complexes, totaling about 1,000 units, near Sharpstown High School.After a decade-long battle, only one of the
complexes has been addressed in any meaningful way; and it was the smallest,
least troubled of the three.

Our slow progress wasn’t for lack of trying.We hammered local officials on the
issue.We contacted State
officials.We worked with private
investors.(In fact, were it not for
private investors using tax credits, we wouldn’t have even been able to address
that one complex).But we never got help
from HUD.They didn’t even have anyone
to contact about our issues.It really
felt like they didn’t care about our area.And my old neighborhood is not alone.Neighborhoods all over the Country face deteriorating housing stock,
urban blight, and a lack of funds to make repairs – and most get no help from
HUD.

The experience was really frustrating.The ideas behind Fair Housing Law are noble;
but HUD’s new approach is not.They’re going
to war with cities and towns, while ignoring the call to improve existing housing.It’s not fair.

It has been quite a year.My Son was born.I have changed
jobs.I have stepped-down from my
position as President of the Braeburn Super Neighborhood.I have been nominated to the Board of the
Brays Oaks Management District.

Most of all, my wife and I have moved.We are still in Houston, of course, but now
we are in the neighboring Brays Oaks Super Neighborhood.

My articles will continue, as time permits.There is certainly a lot to write about.

The primary function of the Houston Department of Housing and Community Development is “to provide decent housing, create a suitable living environment and expand economic opportunities, principally for low and moderate income persons.”But we also need an HDHCD Director who really understands our City, is sensitive to local concerns, and helps neighborhoods solve their problems.

It’s tempting to blame choice for the failure of schools like Sharpstown High.The assumption is that if you give kids the chance to leave their local zoned schools, those schools will fail because they’ll lose their best and brightest students.But the assumption is overly simplistic and very dangerous.It helps cause the failure of zoned schools, and it has been proven wrong by Ms. Ladd[ii].

When a zoned school starts to lose students to Magnet and Charter Schools, it creates unique opportunities.If the school can keep its teachers, students who stay can benefit from smaller class sizes and one-on-one attention.Furthermore, the school can focus on the issues facing its remaining students.Do most of them have parents who are too busy to help with homework?An after-school tutoring program could be established to help fill the gap.Is teenage pregnancy a problem?Programs could be set up to address it.Most of all, zoned schools can take stock of the neighborhoods around them.They can work with neighborhood groups, to make their curriculum fit with the needs of the surrounding community.Then they can market that curriculum to parents in the neighborhood, to help stem or reverse the exodus of students.

These opportunities are very often lost; and from what I can tell, part of the reason is that zoned schools are used for political reasons.Opponents of school choice hold them up and say “I told you so,” instead of seizing on opportunities to improve them.A culture of lost opportunities has been created, and it has been especially damaging to Sharpstown High School.Two decades of deterioration have left it one of Houston’s worst.The school has been named to HISD’s Apollo 20 Program, which offers a glimmer of hope, but which might fail[iii].It’s a real shame, because there are beautiful, vibrant neighborhoods around the Sharpstown High School, with parents who are afraid to send their kids to it; and there are students attending the school, who deserve better.

[i] I had initially thought that Sharpstown’s poor graduation rate in the study was the result of faulty methodology on the part of Children at Risk.But in fact their research is sound.

[ii] Ms. Ladd’s work is important because it throws a wrench in the common wisdom that was behind The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.No Child Left Behind created a culture of ‘teaching to the test’ and did not address the problems it was supposed to fix.

[iii] The Apollo 20 program’s goal is to improve student performance with a longer school day, a longer school year, and one-on-one tutoring.But Apollo 20 labels schools as failing – in turn making it more difficult for them to attract students.The damage done by this label, could far outweigh any benefits from the program.To be fair, the schools are failing, but that’s not something that we should continuously remind people of.It’d be better if there were Apollo programs in all HISD schools, to help students who are struggling academically, regardless of what campus they are in.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, there was a concerted effort to help the poor relocate to the suburbs.Subprime mortgages allowed the poor to pursue a mirage of safety and good schools.HUD and state agencies prioritized the construction of low-income housing in the suburbs.This was a reaction to studies on ‘concentrated poverty’ from the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.These studies found that people who live in areas with ‘concentrated poverty’ suffer high rates of joblessness, poor education, and high crime.They even suffer high mortality rates, due to the lack of adequate health care in their neighborhoods.The belief was that people who live in socio-economically diverse neighborhoods, are less likely to have these problems.

This stands to reason.Suburban schools were not necessarily prepared for the emotional and social baggage of children from broken homes and communities.The problem of educational achievement prevented the very poor from finding employment, which in turn fueled risky and criminal behavior.These problems are also present in impoverished neighborhoods, but instead of studying the problems and using our resources to address them, we simply helped people move away.

It’s understandable that we took this cop out.It’s very difficult to improve the quality of life in a poor neighborhood.Isolation needs to be overcome with better transit.Commercial space needs to be constructed to attract employers.Schools need to be carefully tailored to the needs of the community.Medical clinics need to open.Grocery stores and other retailers need to be lured back.Police officers need to be hired.Parks need to be built.Neighborhoods might even need to be rebranded.And all of this is in addition to the rehabilitation and replacement of substandard housing.It’s a huge endeavor, but well worth it.Just look at neighborhoods where this kind of holistic reinvestment has already happened – The South Bronx in New York City for example.

Some might ask: “if we concentrate on poor neighborhoods in cities, aren’t we turning our backs on fair housing and diversity in the suburbs?”The answer is ‘no.’The suburbs will naturally become more diverse, as attitudes change, and as more minorities reach the middle class.As long as the free market keeps providing us with new suburban housing, there will be no shortage of older housing for the poor.(Taxpayer funding can be used to prevent this older housing becoming slums.)

There’s a saying in the South Bronx:“Don’t Move – Improve.”We owe it to our cities to follow that lead.We must concentrate on identifying the problems in poor neighborhoods and addressing those problems; instead of simply helping people move to the suburbs.

About Me

I am a registered architect in Houston Texas. I am the past President of the Braeburn Super Neighborhood Council, and I am on the board of the Brays Oaks Special Management District. ...................................................................................
My involvement in the Civic Club and Super Neighborhood came about because I believe that rich or poor, we all want safe, vibrant neighborhoods in which to live and work.
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The Citizen Architect Blog was begun in 2009 as the Civic Architect Blog. It was created because we have to think outside the box. We can and we should learn pertinent lessons from other cities. But Houston has to create solutions that are uniquely it's own, because this is a unique city.